Global Voices was born in 2004 during a conference of bloggers that took place at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School, from an idea of Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Tripod, Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN correspondent in China .

“Giving voice to those who have no voice”, this is the motto of the citizen journalism project which has promoted Global Voices since 2004. Their slogan alone is enough to portray how serious the commitment of the team of bloggers and translators is against global society, it is a complex endeavor  and to try to practice it  every day is a continuing challenge.

Global Voices is one of the most interesting  examples of experimental participatory journalism because it involves marginalized and weaker populations, the reality of which is simply reported, when they really need to be heard, aided, supported and then looked at more closely.

At the same time the project gives an important role to blogs, which while in Italy remain anchored to the idea of “private diary” or “creative work”, in other countries they have become  important tools for disseminating news, for their  capacity to shed light on situations that would otherwise be ignored.

The realities of countries that live under censorship, where freedom of expression is a luxury and where the digital divide is strongly felt, thanks to Global Voices and projects closely related to it , such as Advocacy and Rising Voices, they can finally may emerge and be heard .

Thanks to the work of the team of volunteer translators in the project Language, all news is translated into 15 languages, including most recently also to Italian.

Ciaopeople could not ignore a project so vital in the digital society and with this article wanted to give its small contribution to its promotion and dissemination. Following the official presentation of the Italian version that took place during the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Budapest, I interviewed Eleanor Pantò, translator of the Italian project, coordinated by Bernardo Parrella, reviewing with her the main stages of Global Voices, from its birth in 2004, to today with the  completion of  its Italian localization.

  
How did the Global Voices project begin?
Global Voices is a ‘non-profit initiative of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, that started  in 2004. The idea of the project, born with the intention of “giving voice to those who have no voice”, was launched by Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Tripod, and Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN correspondent in  China.
Initially, the project provided the translation of articles into English only. Then thanks to Portnoy Zheng, the current coordinator of the Language project, in 2007 it gave a green light to Chinese and other 14 languages which now include Italian.

What are the issues related to economic and cultural conditions of the countries to which it  gives voice that Global Voices has encountered and still deals with?
The problems are diverse and depend on the economic, cultural and political conditions  of the countries in question. These are issues of censorship, freedom of speech, expression, the digital divide, the lack of devices and connections.

How does Global Voices try to address them?
Global Voices addresses these sensitive issues with initiatives that aim to give support to marginalized populations. We have done two projects with twin GV, Advocacy and Rising Voices.
The first is  Advocacy, fighting for freedom of thought, within which we try to train people who write on blogs and enable them to continue the activity of citizen journalism, without incurring with problems with the harsh laws of their countries.
An example is teaching people how to post anonymously, without being recognized, an issue strongly felt in countries like China where censorship is very strong.
The Rising Voices project was born with the intention of bridging the digital divide, by teaching skills to the populations of developing countries and giving them the opportunity to obtain digital citizenship, a key element in becoming a full member to join the global conversation.
Within Rising Voices there are training initiatives on new media and blogs for marginalized populations such as HiperBarrio, implemented in the Colombian city Meddelin, a district with a high crime rate or Foko, made in Madagascar, with the Foko Blog Club, instructs the locals on how to use the average citizen to describe their everyday realities and connect to the global conversation.
 
What is the relationship between Global Voices, in its quality of citizen journalism and traditional media?
Actually, I do not think there is opposition between the media and Global Voices, partly because many of the bloggers are professional journalists. We try to give voice to news that does not find space on traditional media. Our  aim is to  create a code of ethics of citizen journalism. Journalists have one to follow and it is time that citizen journalists also have rules to respect. One of the main issues that interests us personally concerns the boundaries between public and private entities, that are more often than not, surpassed. This occurred with the massacre of Akihabara, Tokyo last June 8. Public opinion has, in fact, considered the shooting of photos by persons who were not official reporters on the scene, immoral. It is in cases like these that rules need not to exceed certain limits.

During the GV Summit in Budapest the Italian version was officially launched adding it to other 14 languages. Was the intention to keep our country up to date with what is happening in weaker countries or to also bring out the realities of our nation?
The Italian edition was born with a desire to give voice and disseminate news about hidden or ignored cultures of countries with problems of censure, related to freedom of expression, or with a strong digital divide. In line with the Global Voices project which does not address the current news of North America and Western Europe because it is already widely disseminated by major media, initially, our country was not treated.  Recently, however, we did request that Italian news that in some ways has characteristics similar to other realities, be discussed.

On what basis do translators choose the articles that need to be translated?
Topics range from current affairs to social issues to environmental subjects. The translations of articles are at the discretion of the translator and so it is possible that the same article is not translated into all the 15 languages. In this regard we are trying to come up with an  editorial policy.

How is  citizen journalism considered in  Italy?
At the Summit of Budapest we discussed this issue with Alfredo Di Giovampaolo, a professional journalist and blogger (aka SirDrake), who emphasized that “sensitivity in the journalistic field towards citizen journalism is still very low. There are not many journalists that write on the internet, or who have a blog or are part of a social network. Above all, few are those who are questioning how the web and blogs will change the profession of journalist.>>
What is also missing is Internationalization: in Italy  there are still very few blogs that have an English version.
Global Voices is a project that is crucial for the global society because it sheds light on realities that are often hidden or ignored and because it represents an important step in the evolution of how to “make information”. An evolution that depends on the new medium which is the web, but also on an awareness that the journalistic profession is changing, and is increasingly open to internationalization and ready to gather contributions from below.

Simona Fiore
Qbr Magazine Editor

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